


Hooyah!

by mustangcandi



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Season 9 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 16:18:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19338112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustangcandi/pseuds/mustangcandi
Summary: Some things would never change between the two of them.





	Hooyah!

**Author's Note:**

> \- This fic fell out of me after the mid-season hiatus of Hawaii Five-O (Episode 10, Season 9) before we knew anything more about Catherine's role in Season 9 (in case you missed it, Season 9 spoilers ahead! Proceed with caution.)
> 
> \- I haven't officially posted anything new in over 3 years. I'm really quite rusty and I've decided the only way to get over that is to post something - no matter how good, bad, or otherwise it might be.
> 
> \- I'm doing a re-watch of Hawaii Five-O now, and am constantly reminded that Steve/Catherine is my OTP. (Sorry, not sorry. I know there are a lot of Catherine haters out there. I respect your opinion, and love y'all. So no hating on this please just because it's not your fave pairing.)

No matter how hard he tried, Steve could not process what he saw in front of him. Joe White – a man who had seen extensive combat, who’d been down range in some of the most intense battles, who had saved Steve’s ass more than once – was dead. If Steve hadn’t been looking at the cold, lifeless headstone marking the grave of his friend and mentor, he wouldn’t have believed it at all. Joe disappeared and reappeared when presumed dead on more than one occasion. But this wasn’t one of Joe’s ghostings. There was no coming back from this.

Steve had been there when Joe was shot. He’d been there when Joe had nearly fallen off his horse as they rode to what Steve thought was medical help. But instead, Joe wanted to see his favorite spot on his land one last time. Joe had known the bullet that entered his torso was shredding his liver to pieces. It was under the shade of a billowing tree in the middle of the Bitterroot Valley ranch, looking at a gorgeous sunset where Steve held his friend in his arms until Joe took his last breath. And it was under this same tree where Steve buried his friend and mentor. Steve had set the headstone himself, and yet, staring at it now, he still couldn’t believe this was reality. Looking at the headstone, Steve knew the only other time in life when he’d felt this lost was the day his own father had been killed. That journey brought Joe White back into his life. 

This was different though. His father had left clues to understand the motives of that case; Steve had next to nothing to go on with no place to start looking for answers as to why Joe had been taken from him. All Steve knew was that someone had been targeting the Navy SEAL team from an Op in Morocco, and Joe wasn’t the first casualty. Steve was now the only one left standing. This was bigger than Joe but Steve couldn’t move past this. Not yet.

He moved to sit on the ground in front of the headstone. It was taking everything he had to hold back the hot tears in his eyes. “What do I do now, Joe?” he asked, knowing there wouldn’t be an answer.

“What do I do?” he repeated, seeing only Joe’s name etched in stone in front of him.

Steve brushed his hands over his short hair before slapping his knees, and then stood up again. He paced. Grief was starting to give way to anger. “What do I do, Joe?!?” he shouted, his hands slamming down on the granite, not bothering to fight the tears now.

“You can start by finding the son of a bitch who did this.”

Steve jumped when he heard the voice in the otherwise deserted field, turning around to see Catherine Rollins sauntering closer behind him.

“Cath?” he spoke her name, confused and not bothering to wipe his face dry.

“Hey sailor,” she answered, keeping her distance then to avoid intruding his space.

“What… what are you doing here? How’d... you even find me?”

Catherine risked a step closer. “Do you think I’d be anywhere else right now?”

Today was turning out to be a day of seeing things he couldn’t believe. Catherine… his Catherine… had come to him when she’d heard about Joe. The last time he’d seen her, they’d solved a major crime involving uranium with ties to one of the CIAs most wanted. They’d parted as friends but Steve would always know she was the one. He’d broken it off with Lynn after that mission. There was no point in even a casual thing. Catherine had his heart even if he’d never tell her again.

He watched as she took another step closer to him and it was the movement that triggered the memory. It was Joe who made Steve promise to ask Catherine out when they survived the mission that had almost killed him. Now that he thought about it, it was always Catherine who was there when he needed someone the most. And in this moment, she was standing in front of him, one hand on her hip, purposefully avoiding the sight of the headstone that marked an old friend’s grave and focusing solely on Steve.

Steve closed the gap between them and took her into his arms in welcome. “Thank you Cath, thank you,” he breathed into the crook of her neck before he whispered it once more against her ear.

“You can thank me when we get the bastards who did this,” she replied, and Steve felt her trembling against him, holding back her own raw emotions.

Her words made him smile for the first time in days, realization dawning that some things would never change between the two of them. “The mouth on you,” he teased, pulling away to share his smile with her.

“I don’t ever remember hearing you complain about it,” she retorted, dragging a finger across her cheek to hide a tear.

Steve chuckled and nodded at that, looking once more to the headstone. Catherine was close enough she could nudge him with her shoulder to distract him from the solemn sight, before she spoke again. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, sailor,” she said, moving her head to the left to encourage him to move back to the house. “And we’ve got to get you a shave. That beard has got to go.”

“I don’t ever remember hearing you complain about it,” he repeated her words back to her and watched the smile go from her lips into her eyes before he let her lead him away from Joe’s final resting place.

Two weeks later, the man responsible for murdering Joe and the rest of the Navy SEAL team was buried, and a network of terrorists was disabled following a major take down. But Steve couldn’t help thinking about how that wasn’t the most satisfying and surprising thing about this morning.

Catherine was lying breathless and on top of him as they both recovered from an intense round of love making after hours of rolling around in the sheets of his bed.

“Keep this up, sailor, and I’ll be dehydrated,” she teased, carefully sliding off of him to fit perfectly against his side.

Steve made no movement to hold her. Quite frankly he didn’t have the strength. “I’m not the one who started it last time,” he finally huffed with amusement in his voice.

“How was I supposed to know talking about CIA weapons ops would be so… invigorating?”

Steve managed to turn his head to look at her and already found her laughing. “You’re right. I know better,” she chuckled.

Steve nodded at that and laughed with her, finally able to take a deep breath. He shifted his weight so he and Catherine could lay side by side, noses nearly touching. He started to speak, but stopped to simply enjoy the sight of her in front of him. Her face was flushed, her eyes closed, and she was smiling contentedly like a cat stretched out in the morning sun. She had been by his side throughout the case to solve Joe’s murder, as she had been so many times before, and she was by his side now. She had never been more beautiful, he thought, as a rush of memories danced through his mind.

“What are you thinking about, Steve?” she asked as though she could read his thoughts.

“Joe White,” he answered honestly and watched as her eyes came open.

“I’ll try not to be offended by that,” she said, snuggling closer to him and only mildly nudging his ribs with her elbow to remind him to choose his next words carefully.

Steve laughed again and finally found the strength to wrap an arm around her. “I was thinking about something Joe said to me a long time ago, and something he said right before he died.”

“And what was that?” she asked, her voice softening with her need for sleep.

“Do you know he was the first person to tell me to remove my head from my ass and ask you out on a real date all those years ago? And then, in those last hours, he told me to not wait as long as he did to find someone.” 

“Mmm,” she hummed, and Steve felt her fingers gently stroking the skin over his heart. 

He looked at her, realizing how much he missed the simple pleasure of watching her fall asleep these past months and years since he’d ended things between them. This thought made him consider his next words, knowing after all the separations and the decisions they both made for country and career, Catherine was the one person he couldn’t live without. She knew all of his bullshit, and she loved him anyway. And no one else satisfied, excited, fulfilled him the way she did. His friend and fellow SEAL, Freddie, knew they were “the real deal” after only 3 dates and he’d given Steven explicit instructions to not mess it up. Remembering Joe and Freddie, Steve smiled. He'd never considered the fact that his whole life he’d been surrounded by romantics, and now they'd apparently finally rubbed off on him.

“Hey, Cath?” he spoke before she was too far gone to hear him.

“Hmm?”

“Marry me?”

He watched her smile, eyes closed, still on her way to sleep. “Hooyah,” she breathed.

“Hooyah,” he echoed, and wrapped her tightly in his arms. “Thanks, Joe,” Steve said to no one, before he followed his Catherine into dreams.


End file.
